1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an information processing device, a program for operating the information processing device, a document scanning device and a document scanning system.
2. Related Art
Document scanning devices capable of scanning images on both sides of a double-sided document (double-side scanning) are in practical use in recent years. Such document scanning devices supporting the double-side scanning (double-sided document scanning devices) are employing different double-side scanning methods depending on their types. For example, a double-sided document scanning device of a certain type feeds a document to a scanning unit (placed in the middle of a document feeding path) with an ADF (Automatic Document Feeder), generates image data of the first surface of the document by scanning the first surface with the scanning unit, turns over the document, feeds the document again to the same scanning unit (used for the scanning of the first surface), and generates image data of the second surface of the document by scanning the second surface with the scanning unit. A double-sided document scanning device of another type feeds a document to a pair of scanning units (placed in the middle of a document feeding path) with an ADF and generates image data of the first and second surfaces of the document at once by simultaneously scanning the first and second surfaces with the pair of scanning units. Such double-sided document scanning devices have been disclosed in Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No.HEI05-232760 and Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No.HEI04-259163, for example.
In the double-sided document scanning devices like those described above, the image scanning direction of the scanning unit (main scanning direction) and the feeding direction of the document (sub scanning direction) can differ between the scanning of the first surface and the scanning of the second surface, by which the image data of the second surface (obtained by the scanning of the second surface) can be generated in a state horizontally and/or vertically inverted from the actual image on the second surface. Therefore, a scanner driver designed specifically for a document scanning device, installed in an information processing device such as a PC (Personal Computer), is generally provided with a function of correcting the direction of the image data of the second surface (compensating for the horizontal and/or vertical inversion of the scanned image data) by executing an inversion process to the image data.
Whether the scanned image data involves the horizontal and/or vertical inversion or not varies depending on the double-side scanning method of the document scanning device. Therefore, a scanner driver designed specifically for the document scanning device, in which information about the inversion has previously been incorporated, is capable of executing a proper inversion process to the image data of the second surface.
However, when a user of a PC (information processing device) hopes to use a new document scanning device (of a type different from that of a document scanning device currently used with the PC), the user has to take the trouble of installing a new scanner driver designed specifically for the new document scanning device.
It is of course possible to configure a document scanning device to execute a proper inversion process to the scanned image data of the second surface for itself and transmit the inverted image data to the information processing device. However, installing such a function in a document scanning device is extremely disadvantageous from the viewpoint of costs since the inversion of image data requires a considerable memory capacity and a high-speed processor and the data size of image data is increasing year after year.